Search on A Photo Editor

This Week in Photography Books: Misty Keasler

We have so few memories of our youth, and it’s not like we can make more. There is what there is, and we re-scan them from time to time, like popping your favorite DVD into the machine.

(For those of you under the age of 20, DVDs are round, plastic discs that play movies and music. I know you’ve never heard of them before, but until recently, they were good tech, and Netflix used to send them in the mail.)

The few memories we do retain have an outsized role in representing our childhoods. All my memories, until I went to college, probably tab up to a few seconds of brain time; less than .000000000001% of what actually transpired.

So our memories become the Mt. Rushmore of our childhood.

One of my favorites is about the time my Uncle Keith, (who’s due to visit this weekend from New Jersey) came to pick me up at Oakhurst Day Camp, down the shore.

I must have been 5 or 6.

Our big plan was go to the Haunted House nearby at the Long Branch boardwalk. It was open part of the year, jutting well over the Atlantic Ocean.

We’d talked about doing this for a while, and the day had finally arrived. It was a big thing for him to pick me up, so I was super-psyched.

We got the boardwalk, and my anticipation only grew. He was carrying me on his shoulders, so I could see above the crowd, and it felt safe and secure.

Until we got within 100 feet of our destination, when I saw some scary, made-up Frankenstein’s bride standing in front of the door. Really, we were not that close. There’s no way I could remember what she actually looked like, now, at 43.

But it scared me shitless.

“Stop,” I yelled.
“Uncle Keith, stop!”

He stopped.

“No way,” I said. “I can’t go in there.”
“But you were so confident,” he replied. “So sure of yourself. You said you weren’t scared.”

“I am. I am scared. We can’t get any closer to that place. We have to leave now.”

“Are you sure,” he asked?

“Yes, please. Maybe when I’m older I can take it. But not now. We have to get out of here.”

So he took me for a Stromboli instead, which was delicious, and I never went back. The entire boardwalk burned down, within a year or two, so I never had the chance to confront the fear.

Instead, I grew up to be someone who doesn’t like horror movies, or being scared. (Sci-fi stuff like “Stranger Things” is the limit of what I can handle.)

So maybe that’s why I don’t love Halloween?

Lots of grownups can’t wait to design their costumes. They go all out, dressing up at work, at parties, or when they take their kids trick or treating.

You know the type.
And there are a lot of people like that.

Probably more than there are Halloween grinches like me.

But this time of year, the cultural aesthetic is so specific.

Ghouls and skeletons.
Monsters and witches.
Guts and blood.

Some people eat that shit up. They love to be scared, and watch faux-killers and dastardly demons tear through high school kids like a Ginsu knife through aluminum. They’ll watch every “SAW” movie, in a marathon, and then go hang out in a graveyard at 3am.

Those people might, realistically, open a Haunted House somewhere, because they still exist.

And someone has to be in charge of organizing the rush of the macabre. The feeling of being awake, in a nightmare. What does it look like, when rendered in plastic, makeup and ketchup?

I’m glad you asked.

Because if this isn’t the perfect week to take a look at Misty Keasler’s new book “Haunt,” published by Archon Projects, then I’m a one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eater. (The book accompanies a solo show at the Ft. Worth Modern through November 26)

The first thing this book makes me wonder: what kind of person is Misty?

Does she like to be scared? Was tracking down these places a way to use her art practice to connect with an existing passion?

Did she name her kid after Wes Craven? (To be honest, I met Misty at a brunch in Dallas last year, and don’t think her baby was called Freddy or Jason.)

Or is she really repelled by these places, but wanted to conquer a deep fear, like driving into a hurricane?

(To use a “Stranger Things 2” reference, spoiler alert, I’d ask if she was like Will, taking Sean Astin’s advice to stand tall and confront the Shadow Monster in the upside-down.)

Because the pictures are unsparing. They stare right into this stuff.

Scary clowns. Dead chickens. Oozing viscera.

These are the things we want OUT of our heads, not in them. Looking at the pictures, I fear, is embedding these photographs
in my subconscious, where they might turn up later, in the night.

(Damn, you, Misty!)

But what is it like, for the aficionados? They must relish the fear, the adrenaline drops, the sense of being alive.

Because people pay money for the feeling. And now that I think about it, anyone who buys one of Misty’s prints will be choosing to have it on the wall at all times.

No thank you.

But as art, I have to give her serious credit. The pictures are well made, and let the subject matter do most of the talking.